Game info

• Title Planet Coaster 2
• Developer [Frontier Developments]
• Publisher [Frontier Developments]
• Year 2024
• Platform Playstation 5
• Genre Simulation

Reach new heights of creativity, management, and sharing as you construct the theme parks of your dreams combining epic water rides and coasters to delight and thrill your park guests. Dive in now! Expand your imagination: Enhanced and improved building and pathing tools let you create spectacular, true-to-life theme parks, complete with sprawling plazas. Make your mark on the world as you shape terrain and populate your park with stunning swimming pools and thrilling rides. It’s never been easier to bring your dream park to life. Create the ultimate theme park: Dive into a world of creativity with nine distinct themes, from returning classics like Pirate and Western, to exciting new additions in Viking and Mythology. With thousands of themed customisable pieces at your fingertips, every creation will be truly unique.

Player Select

As we’re all very aware, I adored Planet Zoo so much that the game reviews on this site came to an abrupt halt while I played literally nothing else. I thought it was worth having a look at Planet Coaster, seeing as I love these simulation games and I used to enjoy Rollercoaster Tycoon as well. This is just the next level of that adventure.

It’s in the Game

The good thing is, having played a lot of Planet Zoo, the mechanics of playing the game are almost identical. The controls, the menus, the ideas behind it are all very similar, so it was quite easy to get stuck in straight away. The visuals are incredble, the graphics very engaging, and it’s an excellent simulation game.

However, I have to admit, I was terrible at it and it wasn’t that much fun for me. The designing part of things is not really what I’m here for, and although there’s an element of that in the Zoo, you don’t have to be good at it to get a functional wildlife park. The rollercoasters are another matter, though. You do have to be quite technically good at what you’re placing and where - the logistics of it, even if they do sometimes defy physics.

I honestly got so stuck with just trying to create a water slide - it was either deadly boring or entirely impossible, and then I had placed it so the base of the slide entrance was trapping people as they exited the pool. I kept getting these warnings from people who were stuck, it was a nightmare. I think this is a really great game and if you enjoy the building part of it, you’re going to love it, but for me, I was really just wanting to go back to the safety of the Zoo.

Thoughts

I’ve seen that the game received mixed reviews out in the wider world that do sort of follow along my line of thinking - great visuals, creativity and features, but quite a lot of fiddly bits and manual intervention. So with that in mind, I feel comfortable in having played this and seeing what it can do, but not adding it to my roster of regular gameplay. It would have to be spectacular to rival the baby pandas, anyway.

Rating: 2 / 5